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Friday, August 30, 2013

Today it's fabric-covered headbands… For these I went to Sally Beauty and bought a set of 3 headbands called Style It Up Glitter Headbands. I removed the glitter fabric covering, so I would have just the plastic headband. For these particular headbands I suggest cutting 1.75 inches of fabric on the bias maybe about 15 inches long. With right sides together sew about a 3/8 or 1/2 inch seam allowance and cut off 1/4 inch of the seam allowance, turn it right side out and slip it over the plastic headband. Cut off any excess fabric, tuck in the ends and hand sew the ends shut.

These could definitely be worn as is, but look how cute they look with the felt bows and the fabric bow hair ties! So many possible looks with just one headband!

And it just so happened that I already had some bias strips cut out (or at least some fabric already cut on the bias) from scraps from these 2 dresses, making this a super duper quick and easy project. Keep that in mind when you are cutting out a pattern that requires bias strips, why not cut out enough extra bias strips to make a fabric-covered headband?

It was fun to make all these hair accessories this past week, they are definitely instant gratification projects (so much quicker than sewing a dress!)

Thursday, August 29, 2013

More hair accessories… the previous days I shared ones made with wool felt: the felt bow hair clips and the felt-covered barrettes… now moving on to fabric. Following the Oliver+S free bow hair tie pattern and tutorial, I went digging through my fabric scraps looking for leftovers from outfits I've already sewn for my girl, you know, so that her hair accessories could match or coordinate with her clothing. I sewed 7 so far, tied them to elastic ponytail holders and voilà!

PS She won't be wearing them all together like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Well this is embarrassing.. I have been meaning to make some of these felt-covered barrettes for several years (they come from an Angry Chicken blog post from 2007)! These are cute little felt sleeping bags for plain metal barrettes. Most of them I hand sewed a button on, but for the light blue ones I sewed on 3 teeny tiny jingles bells. Fun and easy, try making some yourself if you haven't already.

PS She won't be wearing them all together like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

We're getting ready for back to school and my studio has become a busy little factory for making hair accessories. Did I ever mention that my now 6 year old daughter has never had a hair cut? With her extremely long hair, something needs to be done with her hair to keep it out of her face, every morning before heading off to school. So these felt bows on hair clips should do the trick. I dug through my stash of wool felt (most of the wool felt came from here) and whipped up 7 bows following the Oliver+S free felt bow pattern and tutorial. Unfortunately my girl looses a lot of her hair accessories at school, and although I'd be disappointed if she lost some of these, I would only be a little disappointed as they take just a small amount of felt (of which I have plenty more in my stash), they are super easy and take only a few minutes to make. Now I'm off to make different hair accessories…

PS She won't be wearing them like this, just for displaying them for the photo to share with you :o)PPS Looking for hair ideas? I did this post a while back about summer hair and Babes in Hairland has a lot of great ideas.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Another summer, another birthday party... this year the birthday girl wanted a cat + art birthday party.

So we made our own invitations... I had my teenage son lightly sketch an outline of a cat in pencil on watercolor paper, then my daughter painted them in with watercolor paint.

White paper bags were decorated with a cat by simply tracing a cat image found here.

The white paper bags were for holding the piñata candy. I got the idea for making a cat piñata here. And got the idea to use a beach ball here.

My husband did papier-mâché over 2 beach balls, the second beach ball was one step behind the other just in case the first one did not work out (that way we would not have to scramble at the last minute trying to make another piñata from scratch). The first beach ball piñata did end up working out, so now we have another beach ball piñata for another time.

My teenage son painted the piñata and gray felt ears were glued on. Then it was filled with 5 pounds of candy!

Each of the 10 kids got to whack it with a stick at least once. The piñata was a big hit with the kids!

The orange ones were lined in white with golden stars... the pink ones in pink with white polka dots.

One blue cat...

lined with gray with white polka dots...

and one gray one...

lined with gray with white polka dots.

And it would not be a cat + ART birthday party without art... the party took place at an art center and an art teacher read the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" then all the kids used watercolor paper, cray pas, and watercolor paints to create their art project.